


though I walk through the valley

by pan_ismyhomeboy



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Better living through maladaptive defense mechanisms, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, PTSD, Past Sexual Abuse, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Triggers, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:39:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1369198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pan_ismyhomeboy/pseuds/pan_ismyhomeboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[No Inquisition spoilers!] Cullen marks himself to remember the horrors of Kinloch Hold. He falls into his Knight-Commander's bed to find purpose again. But it's a new recruit who finally gives him the comfort he craves.</p><p>Hurt/comfort with heavy emphasis at first on the hurt; please mind the trigger warnings. This is NOT a romantic fix-it fic. It's about the awful things depression does to a person and the painful path toward healing and closure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> OP requested a self-harm h/c fic and that really fit some recent experiences for me, so I decided to kill two cathartic birds with one stone. Title comes from Psalm 23:4. 
> 
> Dedicated to everyone who's ever walked through the valley.

The thing about nightmares is they never really stop. Consciousness is only as much of a blessing as he’ll allow and he hasn’t believed in blessings for a long, long while. Not really, not truly, not if he was forced on pain of death or worse to recant his sins and finally speak the truth that’s been lurking behind his mind every minute of every day since Kinloch. He says what must be said and believes as much as he can for the sake of the men under his command, but it has been an astonishingly long time since Cullen believed the Maker would actually deliver him from evil. Not when the Ferelden Circle faltered under Greagoir, one of the best men he’d ever known. Not when he’d been delivered into Meredith’s care, only to watch this remarkable woman grow harsh and paranoid under the weight of her own ego. Not when every dreaming moment in the Fade means nothing less than a demon-haunted existence.

He does not know when he began marking himself. He does not know entirely _why_ he does so, or why he takes such pains to avoid true arteries that would finally push him to the Maker’s side, to confront his disappeared god once and for all. The Chantry teaches suicide to be a sin and it shocks Cullen at the ferocity with which he does _not_ want to die, when he looks at his reflection in his straight razor and considers the ease with which he could draw it across his throat. The first time he allows himself to fully confront this thought, he tosses the razor with as much force as he can muster and nearly runs to the chapel confessional. But by the time he arrives the panic has subsided over what had, for even the briefest of moments, felt like a completely natural course of action. In the panic’s place is an eerie calm that tells him to kneel and pray and never speak a word of this to anyone because he _knows_ what happens to Templars who try to escape their duty through sin and vice. He cannot compromise his position in the Gallows, cannot allow himself to succumb, again, to weakness.

What is worse, he wants to know, the fact he can never forget the whisper of demons in his ear, or the fact all the whispers are in his own voice?

He knows he had not started cutting his skin until his arrival at the Gallows, when the reality of his safety was confirmed and he had enough time and space to have a breakdown. A small one, mind, nothing like what happened at Kinloch that’d had Greagoir pulling him to the side and so terribly gently suggesting a transfer, away from the memories that saturated every stone of every floor of the tower, away from mages that were quickly turning the fear in Cullen’s eyes to fierce hatred, away from the empty dormitories that proved just how horrifically they’d all failed at protecting the mages under their charge, and— 

(The children’s rooms are the worst, the ones who hid rather than follow the adult voices calling them into the hall. They’d hidden under their beds or in closets and cried with relief when his fellow Templars had opened the doors to slaughter all they could find. If blood and death weaken the Veil, then the Veil must be torn completely asunder in these spaces where demons wearing the masks of knights mocked children begging for their lives. He wasn’t _there_ but he remembers with the same awful ferocity he remembers _all_ of it, and there is a scar on his arm for each unhallowed mage who died both from Uldred’s treachery and the Templars’ failure to protect their own.)

—the cold water hits him like a thousand broken shards, forcing a gasp as his skin contracts and pebbles under the onslaught. A second bucket of long-cooled water hits his head and shoulders, momentarily breaking through the spiral of his thoughts.

Here. He is here, in Kirkwall, and for the moment he is safe.

The water brings enough focus that he can marshal his thoughts for the day and plan around the current shape of his nightmares. He will need distraction and lots of it, physical if he can manage. Since his promotion to Knight-Captain he’s missed his regular sparring practice and other bodily aspects of his training. Now it is his job to oversee other recruits’ training, to step back and take a watchful eye while others demonstrate technique. To say that he feels unready for the responsibilities of his position would be a drastic understatement; even if he did not still wake in cold sweats morning after morning or flinch more than is necessary at an unexpected touch, he does not truly have the experience to have merited his promotion. _He_ would not have promoted himself at any rate, but he is not (was not, will not ever be even with the grace of the Maker) Knight-Commander Meredith. What she sees in him is still utterly beyond his comprehension —

No. That is a lie.

He knows what she sees and it terrifies him.

Another splash of cold water against his face is coupled this time with a sharp slap against one naked thigh. The slap is a compromise netted between twin desires: one to stop the whirling thoughts that threaten to overwhelm him, the other to refrain from further mutilating his body. It is a hard smack, one that leaves a red mark on his leg and a tingle to his palm, but it loosens the tightness in his chest and it does not break skin. He will not need to confess this morning.

Cullen’s hands are shaking as he gives himself a perfunctory scrub in the basin. Whether they have stilled by the time he towels off and slips into his underthings will determine if he trusts himself enough with a straight edge. There are days he cannot bring himself to shave for fear of what he’d do with the blade, and there are further days he is recklessly cheerful as he watches his reflection in the mirror, as though daring himself to do it. But today is not one of those days and Meredith will not have to speak with him about setting a good example for the knights he outranks through proper grooming and hygiene. His hands are still as they lather his face and pick up the razor, angling it just so as he sweeps across one cheek. This morning there will be no nicks, neither from nerves nor intent. Around his mouth and chin he leaves a bit of scruff, nothing so substantial as to count as an actual beard. As he shaves, slow and careful, he recites verses of the Chant under his breath until they run together: _blessed are they who do not falter_.

\---

After Wilmod dies, Cullen cuts himself out of a heavy sense of guilt and ill-attended duty. There is grim satisfaction as the tip of his dagger breaks skin and leaves a red line several centimeters across his forearm. When this first began and he’d had no idea of what he was doing or why, he took the time to carve out the initials of his fellow recruits from Kinloch who didn’t make it. Now the newest marks are only thin lines, a rudimentary system of tallies for each person he’d been unable to save. The initials, he’d come to realize, aren’t rightfully _his_ , and after all he isn’t doing this to memorialize _them_ but to punish _himself_. The safety of Gallows recruits is his duty now and he had failed Wilmod — though whether he’d failed the boy at the moment possession occurred or at the moment Wilmod begged his own Knight-Captain for mercy, Cullen doesn’t know.  

When Hawke returns with Keran, Cullen hurts himself for completely different reasons. 

He crosses arms tight against his chest and digs into his arms, breaking open old crescent-shaped scars. _I am safe, I am safe_ , he tells himself as the deluge of memories destroys his grip on reality. Part of his mind _knows_ he is in his quarters at the Kirkwall Gallows, slumped against the locked door and dragging fingernails against his skin. _Please_ , he begs silently (to the Maker, to His Bride, to the bloody dwarven _Stone_ , he doesn’t _care_ at this point) _please stop please stop please_ —

\--- 

No one is ever prepared against demons, not even with all the Chantry-commissioned armor and religious training in the world. Cullen is not prepared for the sheer, visceral horror that is coming face to face with a demon, a creature that sets ablaze the very oldest parts of his brain controlling fear. _This_ is what mages face every second of every day, this horror, this temptation that goes beyond mere desire. _This_ is what awaits each mage forced through their Harrowing, _this_ is what the Rite of Tranquility saves mages from, _this_ is the price of the power to alter reality in a way reserved only for the Maker Himself.

Cullen is tortured in ways he cannot even begin to comprehend, tortured in ways that sink into the crevices of his mind and poison the soil so anything that manages to grow is stunted, twisted, _wrong_. Whispers and screams lurk in his mind, the begging shrieks of apprentices as Uldred’s followers wipe them down, the unholy nerve-jolting shine of blood magic as their corpses rise and fall in ranks. His mind is not his own. His body is not his own. Every inch of him is forfeit, every second merely delaying the inevitable, give in, give in you sweet child and we’ll show you wonders you have no words for, give you power kings can only dream of.

The desire demon wears Solona’s face as it caresses his naked dream-body, fingers sinuous as they pull off his armor. Closed eyes are no defense against a world of dreams, and no matter how he turns the demon finds his mouth again and again and again. In words that are not words it tells him there is pleasure in surrender, a pleasure without pain or fear or doubt. It drinks from him heavily and Cullen swears he can feel his soul pulled from his lips, a tantalizing glimpse of tongue and teeth and he is hard, he is _so_ hard and so very weary from the hours-days-weeks in this place. It would be easy. It would be a relief. It… _she_ …

He does not remember how he finds the strength to refuse the demon for so long but he does, and it incenses the creature wearing the face of the woman he loves. Gentle caresses become clawmarks down his body, kisses turn to bites, licks become scalding lashes against open wounds. This is not real and so it does not have to end. His body endlessly heals and reknits in this dreamscape, enduring more pain and injury than Cullen ever could out there in the real world. Claws wrap around his erection while more claws press along the cleft of his backside, running ominously between either cheek and circling with malice and Andraste _help him_ but his body bucks into the touch, traitorously begging for more.

He will die here. He accepts this with all the finality of a prisoner glimpsing the headman’s axe. This demon will kill him one way or another and all Cullen can decide is whether he allows his body to further Uldred’s reign of terror or if that control must be wrested from his cold corpse. He closes his eyes, bites his lower lip until it bleeds, and does not cede.

\---

Hours have passed by the time he returns to his body. He is damp with the stink of fear-sweat, stomach twisting in protest of having missed too many meals today. Outside his window a crescent moon is already high in the night sky; he will have missed vespers as well, then. There are angry red marks dotting either arm and he feels — nothing. He is bone-weary and exhausted beyond emotion.

His motions are automatic as he staggers to his feet to find some cloth to clean off the blood. He’ll need to treat the wounds so they don’t infect. He’ll need to find a way to word this to the Chantry brothers tomorrow, so he can confess his sins without _actually_ confessing his sins. He’ll need to soak his tunic in cold water before the stains set. The list goes on and on. As terrifying as it will be later to contemplate this refractory period of emotional isolation, now there is nothing but a numb and blessed peace. It is intoxicating to finally not feel. In these moments when he can’t summon the energy to care and it truly seems that nothing matters, he feels _free_.  

Cullen takes his freedom and strips down, collapsing into bed. How bizarre, he thinks as he fades into sleep, that a desire demon should appear to him as any person at all. He knows now that what he wants, what he  _truly_ wants beyond all else in this world, is for everything to end. Offer him that and he does not know that he would even want to resist.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be the start of canon divergence from DA:2 (partially intentionally, partially because I haven't played the game in several months and some of the details have gone fuzzy). I have *not* played Inquisition and won't be able to for some time, so I've intentionally stayed away from main plot spoilers. Because of this, it's possible this fic may not be compliant with Inquisition. This means that if you haven't played Inquisition, hey, this fic is officially spoiler free! I'm only planning on this story going up to the end of Act Three in DA:2, so fingers crossed I'm not writing complete nonsense with future games.
> 
> I appreciate feedback and questions! I'm not often on Tumblr, but feel free to poke me on brig-ambue if you feel so inclined. I will never not want to talk about Cullen.

There are nights he doesn’t dream and nights he dreams too much, mornings he wakes with brittle memories pressed like faded flowers between the pages of books and other mornings when all he’s left with is a bewildering sense of loss. There are nights when true terrors visit him and others that whisper the lie of  _safety_ and  _home_ until dawn breaks and the illusion is shattered. This night his dreams are caught somewhere in the middle: a steady procession of  _something_ before his eyes, running, stumbling, but from what he cannot tell. Details bleed together as his legs and his heart take him inexorably, as always, back to Kinloch. The Ferelden Circle is always so warm in his thoughts, even when he remembers the depths of winter when it seemed no matter how many fires built in how many hearths, none of them, Templar nor mage, could shake the frost from their bones.

By contrast, the Gallows is a place of coldness and metal, even if Kirkwall enjoys milder climes and the virtue of sea breezes. The Gallows is real and undeniable, a washed-out gray and black and blue in his mind’s eye, never mind the statues of gold guarding its walls. Kinloch may have been threadbare and chilled by the lake, may have been even more isolated than other Circles when the snows came and blocked out all trade with the mainland, but he remembers the crushed velvet (ratty and dusty, yes, but real velvet nonetheless) adorning the halls, the feel of worn leather books soft and pliable beneath his fingers. Greagoir had never explicitly told them they could not read the mages’ books but Cullen had always felt an illicit thrill when peering through the not-inconsiderably-sized tomes living in the library. Not that he would have understood what they were on about — not that he wouldn’t have gotten odd looks had he taken one back to his quarters —but it’s natural to be curious, isn’t it?

(He wonders, sometimes, what Uldred had read in his time in the Circle, if there were any books bearing the secrets of his research tucked innocently away on the shelves. If Cullen had given into his curiosity then, he could have —

—done nothing. Same as he could before.)

The dream catches on those thoughts and begins to solidify even as Cullen’s body struggles out of sleep. He is awake enough to feel himself laying in bed, even to smell the stench of fear sweat soaked into his sheets (and Maker, how awful that stench is compared to the sweat of exertion, making his stomach roil and his lips twist firmly in disgust) and yet his self whirls on without the rest of him. He is back in Kinloch’s library surrounded by older mages practicing spells and younger ones practicing catechism. There is fire and warmth and light in these stones, this place he’d so thoroughly called home he’d never had to give it a second thought until it was all shattered and bleeding at his feet.

He remembers the smell of vellum and the burn marks on the wall from errant fireballs and the blood seeping into crushed velvet and the snap of bones flayed out in all directions bodies ought not to go.

He remembers ink and smoke and lamp oil and someone with soft eyes and sharp teeth.

He remembers —

There is a knock at the door and Cullen opens his eyes.

It takes several moments for him to confirm his bearings and in that time he’s already reached for the knife (one of several) tucked under his mattress and turned to face the source of the unexpected sound. He wets his lips and remembers —no, no more memories this morning, and if he has to dig nails into his still half-asleep mind and drag it back into the present then he _will_ , damn the Maker.

Another knock and he manages, “Come.”

Candlelight from the hall spills into room and for a moment he must squint and shield his eyes. The fires in his grate went out long ago and he does not make a habit of keeping his quarters well lit — or occupying them with any sense but that of greatest reluctance, if he’s honest —but the flare of discomfort as his pupils contract is enough to force him back into reality. Too late he realizes he is still brandishing the knife (and completely stark naked; there was a time he would have cared about that sort of thing) and is under no actual threat at all.

“I apologize if I startled you, Knight-Captain. It was not my intention.”

Some say the Tranquil all sound the same, but being unnerving is not the same as completely lacking distinction. After all, blowing across the open mouths of bottles can produce a rich sound even when the container is utterly empty. Without all the _person_ getting in the way the timbre in one’s voice can be even more evident. For example, Cullen can tell before his eyes adjust that the Tranquil in front of him is quite young, only a few years into his manhood and perhaps young enough to have just failed his Harrowing. And furthermore, he can tell this mage has only recently undergone the Rite of Tranquility. There’s something about the inflection and stance of such mages, faint twitches of muscle memory as their minds get used to controlling their bodies without processing emotions first. It fades quickly and is not, as some of his fellow recruits had speculated the night they’d guarded their first Harrowing to end in disaster rather than celebration, proof of a person still inside clawing to get out.

It’s the brand, Greagoir had told them. It makes it so there’s nothing _to_ get out anymore. (“And so nothing else can ever get _in._ ”)

“I’m not startled,” Cullen murmurs, though he knows there’s no use in lying to people who can no longer fathom deception. The knife gets tucked back in its hiding spot with more than a little embarrassment —though there’s no sense in being embarrassed around the Tranquil, either. The young man still stands in the doorway, head tilted in what once must have been an incredibly familiar gesture, and that paired with a flat voice a disquieting effect on Cullen’s already frayed nerves. “You, ah, do you have a message?”

“I was told you needed assistance this morning.” The Tranquil continues to stand where he is, and Cullen would have sworn he was doing so with an expectant expression had he not known better.

“You’ve been told incorrectly. I already have someone to help me.” Which is what makes this entire encounter so disorienting; the other Tranquil know Cullen’s habits by now and interrupt him only when they absolutely must. Cullen _had_ planned on spending the morning in silence without breakfast, only calling for help when needing to be armored. Then straight to morning contemplation, followed by guard duty; no speech until his report to Meredith that night if he could help it. Yet here he is having to form complete sentences and pretend to have not just drawn a weapon in response to a knock on the door. His brow furrows as something at the back of his mind scratches for attention. “Where is Karl?”

“He is no longer here.”

“Where did he go?” He isn’t —shouldn’t be —the sort of man to raise his voice over this, but Karl has become an expected part of his routine and all Cullen can think about is that he wasn’t supposed to be speaking with anyone this early, that he has not prepared himself for the day and someone new —a Tranquil someone, but a someone nonetheless —has seen him disheveled and sick. That his entire body is bare and illuminated by hallway light — “And close the door, if you _please_.”

The Tranquil enters finally and closes the door with a soft click behind him, plunging the room back into darkness. Cullen wonders if the younger man had time to count his scars. His kind are no longer inquisitive, but they are _terribly_ efficient when it comes to cataloging even the most minute detail.

“You do not light your sconces.”

“I prefer not to. Where is Karl?” Cullen hates the tone in his words and takes a slow breath, pulling the anxiety back in on himself. There is less vulnerability in the dark. He should not be frightened so.

“I do not know, Knight-Captain. I only know that I am to replace him.”

“Please, just —just Cullen is fine.”

“As you wish, Ser Cullen.” There is a pause again, as though he is waiting for something. Instructions probably. By the Maker, it’s the first few weeks with Karl all over again. “I cannot see in the dark, so if I am to assist in armoring you I will need light.”

Of the many changes that had come with his promotion to Knight-Captain is the fact Cullen’s armor now requires two people to strap him in properly. He does not relish that this now necessitates an intrusion on his privacy. “A window,” he finally says, fighting the urge to grope for his discarded blankets and presume some amount of modesty. The Tranquil, he has been told so many times, cannot feel humiliation, but — but this one is so _young_. For Cullen to be uncovered would be unseemly.

(And there Cullen can find half a hair’s breadth to relax. He cannot rouse himself from his malaise on his own behalf but can at least make the attempt for others, even if it _is_ for the absurd notion of preserving a Tranquil’s delicate sensibilities.)

This time Cullen is prepared when light streams into his room from pushed-aside curtains. He is _not_ prepared for the freshness of the scar that adorns the Tranquil’s forehead, a mottled and blistered version of the Chantry’s most holy symbol. The brand will heal with time but until then it stays with an ugly stubbornness that both repels and allures Cullen’s gaze. His eyes flicker down to the younger man’s wrists, though they are covered with the long sleeves of a robe. Not, of course, that scars would be an unquestionable indictment of blood magic; it’s an open secret how very many of the Gallows deaths are by mages’ own hands. The boy — the _young man_ , though it is so difficult to think of him as such with the leanness to his build and lack of a single whisker on his face — tilts his head again, arms held loosely at his sides. His hair is freshly cropped and the color of pale straw.

Cullen finally rises from his bed and gropes about for his smallclothes. He turns away as he dresses, speaking over his shoulder. “I haven’t seen you about the Gallows before.” And Cullen memorizes the faces of every mage he comes across whether he wants to or not.

“You have not,” the Tranquil agrees. “I was not raised here.”

Cullen pauses as he starts to pull a light tunic over his head. “You were apostate?”

“Yes. From the Alienage.”

Only then does Cullen notice the ears, almost exactly like a human’s but with a gentle flare at the tip. A halfblood, then, though he’d always heard that children of such unions take after one parent or another rather than both. “And did you resort to blood magic, to earn your brand?”

The other man slowly shakes his head. “The Knight-Commander and First Enchanter considered the Rite a mercy. I was plagued by demons. Now I am not.”

There’d been a time, once, when mages who successfully passed their Harrowing and chose to stay with their Circle would only have been branded at their own request. Even mages who attempted to escape from Kinloch — even those who attempted so _numerous_ times, as one apprentice was so _very_ fond of doing; it had became a running joke among the Templar recruits would be forced to go after him next — were returned and rehabilitated when possible. Nonconsensually putting mages through the Rite of Tranquility was, in theory at least, reserved only for those unable to control their powers or unwilling to use them for the greater good. Perhaps it _is_ a mercy, for others as well as the Tranquil mages themselves, to remove that danger and temptation so none might come to further harm.

Though, in all honesty, he cannot entirely bring himself to think of Meredith as merciful. Isn’t that exactly why he feels so safe by her side?

(“You understand,” she’d told him once after his promotion, “You’ve seen what happens when we spare the rod. You know we can no more afford leniency than any of us can fly. I cannot allow it.”

It was such a sweet relief to be with a kindred spirit, someone who had also been pulled from her moorings and riddled with holes before being left at sea for monsters lurking in the deep. The strength of her conviction had warmed him as much as the late afternoon sun. “ _We_ cannot allow it,” he’d agreed softly. In the space it took for Meredith Stannard to smile, the spark of devotion had already caught and blossomed violently within his chest.

He had, in retrospect, been doomed from the start.)

Suddenly he wants to know nothing else about this man standing before him, not his name nor his age nor reason for being made Tranquil. Cullen is so very, very tired of being the wounded animal, too frightened to even bare his teeth. Anger fills him as he pushes all else aside for the sole purpose of drowning the black depression and lingering nightmares that have licked at his consciousness since the knock on his door.

There cannot be room for compassion between Templar and mage; this truth has wedged itself into his heart after Kinloch and now falls from Meredith’s own lips. This must be his guiding star. _She_ must be his guiding star. Greagoir had seen what Uldred did to the Templars under his care and still did not annul his Circle.

_Speak only her word, sing only her chant..._

Greagoir had been a fool.

_Then the Black City will never again be thine._

“Armor me,” he orders, and the Tranquil attends to him in silence.


End file.
